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Comment by re-thc | Hacker News Reader

> That wasn't always true. The Robinson-Patman Act made it illegal

"Legality" has never stopped big companies from doing these things. Google, Apple, Meta, etc has been receiving fines all day long and they still continue what they do.

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Fines don't scale. The Australian mining company, fined a thousand bucks for every native rock drawing they destroy? They counted them up, paid the fine, and blasted a road through. All gone.

Fines becomes a business calculation. Not a deterrent, not if it matters to the big corporation. Which at some scale, it will become cost-effective.

> Fines don't scale. The Australian mining company

There's the problem. Australia doesn't scale... not the fines.

In Australia, there are a lot of rules, a lot of fines but not much to gain.

Is this a specific jab at something? I don't understand you comment, please elaborate.

A "fine" or "tax" is not necessarly regulation, in that it can be avoided, as in paid for by other actions, or gamed. Regulation should be though of as an input to cause a result in a scenario. Work backwards from the desired result, accounting for gaming the system, to attempt a regulation action. Of course, politicians are motivated only to provide something, not to make it effective.

Fines should be percentage of stock price. Applied to the owners of stock. Next time there is dividend or stock is transacted fine is collected. Still limits the liability to price of stock, but fully incentives stock owners to make sure the leadership will do their best to avoid fines.

I once saw a meme of a quote somewhere that said "if the only penalty for a crime is a fine, then it's only a deterrent for poor people" or something to that effect.

I suppose it scales upward infinitely.

That's why, in Finland, the income of the offender is used to determine the fine (including for speeding). The largest fines for speeding are over 100.€. This is a very effective way to deter the bad behavior by rich people.

As someone proposed on here, instead of fines, punishment should be a percentage government ownership stake. This serves to 1. dilute the shares, punishing the people who can affect change (the shareholders) and 2. Put the government on the inside, a major pain in the ass and a stronger position for the government to know when, prevent, and/or punish these things in the future.

An irredeemable company/ownership will ultimately lose control over time.

I imagine a world sometimes where punitive measures reflect the scope of crimes. If steal from a person is 1 year, then stealing from 1000 is 10 years and from a million is a lifetime. That’d put the end to political shenanigans, in my imagination.

Our legal system would rather do just about anything than bring companies to court. Unless they're, like, giving people HIV. And even then it's reluctant.

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